1. Field of the Invention
The invention refers to a rack and pinion steering system, especially for motor vehicles, with a rack placed in an axially displaceable manner in a sealed housing and with a pinion which can be driven by the steering wheel and which is placed rotatably in a steering gear housing which also serves to guide the rack in the region thereof which is engaged with the pinion at any given time.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In known rack and pinion steering systems of the type described above, the steering gear housing serves not only to mount the pinion actuated by the steering shaft, but additionally acts as mount, guide and vehicle-side support for the rack. The relatively large axial extent of the rack, due to design and operational considerations, results in a correspondingly large and heavy steering gear housing. The is especially contributed to by the part serving to guide the rack (also referred to as the "rack tube"), which thus causes the steering gear housing to have a generally "long" appearance. The complete steering gear housing is bolted onto the vehicle body (e.g., to the vehicle's axle carrier).
Examples of this known state of the art include DE-PS 23 36 572, DE-OS 29 34 922, DE-GM 82 03 943 and DE-S 1,215,011. DE-AS 27 48 092 should also be mentioned with regard to attachment of a steering gear housing to the vehicle body. "Long" steering gear housings known in the art are not only high in weight, but chiefly, require complex, time-consuming and costly machining and are moreover not easy to assemble.